Yes, I Think I Will Add Bacon

Remember when MTV used to actually show music videos? Yeah, me neither. It feels like the Food Network has fallen into the same trap. Prime-time on the Food Network is now about "reality" shows and various competitions involving some manner of cooking or decorating or a combination thereof. The actual cooking shows have been banished to the Cooking Channel, which is outside of my cable package range.

That said, the one reality-style show I do enjoy on the Food Network is "Chopped" (competitors must create meals using an atypical mix of mystery ingredients revealed just seconds before cooking) because it is Iron Chef-esque, but without the abuse of hundreds of dollars in truffles. Plus, there is a dessert round and the frequent use of bacon.

Mary had the phenomenal idea of creating a Chopped-style mystery-box of four ingredients for my dad for Father's Day. We spent the better part of an hour wandering around Whole Foods as we figured they would have the highest concentration of "weird" food to choose from. We walked out with: canned hominy, orange cauliflower, enoki mushrooms, and freeze-dried french fries.  Hominy is made from corn, but if you look at the ingredient list on the side of the can, the only ingredient of hominy, is hominy. So, thanks for that. Orange cauliflower is pretty self explanatory, enoki mushrooms are skinny, tall mushrooms without much else going on for them, and the french fries had the shape of a fry, but the crunch of a potato chip.

Usually, the contestants are given 20 minutes to create a meal using all of the mystery basket ingredients, but since it was Father's Day, we allowed 20 hours.

The end result: a chowder using a puree of hominy and roasted cauliflower, with the mushrooms as garnish.

It tasted great and was a solid start to hopefully a series of these mystery-basket challenges. 

In other delicious news, the Organic Brewer's Festival was this last weekend. The weather was perfect, and there were less people this year walking around with their shirts off who shouldn't have been than last year, which was a welcome sight. One of the highlights from the brewfest last year was the discovery of elephants toes: a very miniaturized version of elephant ears. We found the same food truck this year, and to our delight, there was a sign on the side of the truck proclaiming: "Add bacon to any item: 50 cents." Well, we figured (correctly) that the only way to make fried dough covered in sugar and cinnamon better is to add bacon.

The food truck lady thought we didn't know what we were doing when we ordered the elephant toes with bacon. Please lady, we're trained professionals.

Now that I think about it, I believe the last music video I saw on MTV was Limp Bizkit's "Nookie", which would have put the year at... 1999. Yikes.

--Isaac.